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Watch those TV shopping program. They have those sick big screen smart phones with GPS and bluetooth, android and ios5 dual boot. They usually costs couple of thousand Yuan, but if you order within 15 minutes of the show, you can get it for 599 Yuan.

-_-, I always thought these shopping pograms were just some TV scams, such as a incredibly low price for a fancy product (smartphones, vaccum cleaners, gym stuff and mostly, health products) with enticing narrates, such as " What are ya waitng for? You are not reading the price wrong. Only 998. Only 998 is what takes ya to bring this home". Whenever I saw them , I immediately came to the conclusion that they were scams and just skipped to the next channel. Did not now they are actually trustworty.

I have a XiaoMi 1S and I love it, but it cost me around 1600 RMB. I got the Google Play store downloaded onto it and it has an English mode. Camera takes clear photos, it's really fast and has everything I ever wanted...

Granted it's my first smartphone, but I love it. Only thing is it heats up a bit if you play on it a long time.

Yeah, I almost bought one of those when they first came out. So very, very close. But, I really needed a physical keyboard, so I got an HTC Desire Z. I just can't stand soft keyboards for English, and I write Chinese with pinyin not handwriting.

I still have my cheap Nokia that never dies but I splurged one day and got a Galaxy SII, love this thing, I don't use it for much except the regular things but it just looks pretty. Plus it's a great book reader and Mp3 player which are the two things I use the most anyway.

My old Nokia even has a flashlight!! I'm bowled over. My son dropped it from the second floor into our garden last week (10 meter drop) and it was perfectly fine. I should get a smartphone I know,, just haven't felt a real, pressing need for one. Also, I'm the idiot type who sees a phone to 3000 yuan thinking "It'll be 2500 next month" then the next month I'll think "2100 next month" and then 4 weeks later, a new cool phone will hit the counters at 3000 and I'll rinse and repeat.

Honestly, I wouldn't bother. Unless you get lost a lot as the map function is nice. Or if you travel as that's why I like the book function, rather than bringing one or two books with me, I can bring my own little library. So maybe you should bother... if I lost my current one I wouldn't buy it again (I got is for very cheap as they were trying to sell me a fake one and it was a whole big hassle) but I'd probably one of the 1000 rmb ones or something simpler. Games on the phone just annoy me so I never use that, just the basics.

If you're running an Android phone, there's a free app that will turn your cellphone's camera flash into a flashlight (I think it's called something clever like "Flashlight".) Don't have an iPhone but I would assume they've got something similar.

Seriously useful for going up and down dank staircases in Chinese buildings where the sound-activated lights are broken/burned-out.

Where's the love for Huawei? The Honour got amazing reviews in Western media and you can pick it up for less than 1000 now. Their new one (forgot the name) should be top notch as well, and about one third of an iPhone or SIII.

Ehhh the mini is not so great if your going cheap get one of the sony ones. Sony has great phones you could even grab the old xperia arc =aka most beatiful phone ever made. of you are a casual user its all youl ever need.

I did it with no knowledge of what I was doing and only bricked my phone for two days after wasting the battery when things went wrong! Working great since then! Cyanogenmod for life! (or until something better comes long)

Well, my HTC smartphone that I bought in China came pre-trojaned. I'd grab it in the morning only to find that during the night some Chinese app had been downloaded and installed without my consent or knowledge. Who knows what else was going on that I didn't see. After installing cyanogen, the mystery apps quit showing up, and the battery life doubled. There are phone service shops out there that will install your choice of firmware, just ask around at the phone markets until you find one.

At this point you can get a smart phone for literally 600元。Reasonable data plans start about 130元 a month with more minutes than you need, unlimited txts, but very limited data. You'll be fine if you're doing nothing more than maps, social apps, email, and the occasional website check or wikipedia or whatever. Unless you are super paranoid about the government watching you (you have to register with an ID to get a valid monthly plan) I just can't imagine why you wouldn't get a smartfone at this point. It's to the point where every teller and every janitor has a smart fone of sorts, they are just so damned convenient.

My friend obtained the Korean version of the Galaxy S-m110s (with SAMOLED, not the pentile crap and has a decent camera) for about 1000 at a computer market. The XiaoMi is also a very very good deal. You can also possibly get a GS2 for around 2.5k now if you'd like to shell that out...maybe.

I have an HTC Desire S, bought it like a year ago for 1700, and I havent had any problem. When you buy an Android phone in China, just make sure that you get the real operating system that has Play Store, Gmail..etc and not the horrible chinese software.

Well I am not sure about the iPhone crowd, but the op can get an iPhone 4 for about 200 bucks. That's about 1200 rmb. It's branded, got the App Store, and highly customizable with jail breaking. I just went from the iPhone 4 to the 5 and it's not too different. My old 4 works almost just as fast on ios6.

What I'm a fan of is the super basic smartphone. I have a galaxy mini that doesn't play games very well, but is just fine for getting email/wechat/ebooks/taking pictures of stuff. It's cheap enough so that I won't cry a river if it gets stolen, and given the number of times I've dropped it, nigh indestructable.

Shell out 2k and get yourself a windows phone. I have a lumia 800 and wouldn't trade it for the world. Why? The maps work without internet connection and can route public transportation using a variety of different methods (bus1 bus2 metro3 or bus5 metro4 bus2, etc.) and the translator app also works without internet connection. I can use it to translate words (by hold my camera to a menu or paper) or typed text.

It's fantastic.

But no matter what you get it will be great in your eyes so just enjoy your purchase. Then in two years you can nitpick and get something crazy.

Ok I can agree with that and I'm actually extremely bitter about that.

Everyone harps on Apple but fuck that, they support their users far longer than anyone else. Sometimes they omit features like HDR and SIRI but at least the fucking apps work and the phone doesn't cease getting the bulk of new updates. Android? good luck. Especially the cheapos.

Windows phone so sexy n smooth? Cmon man its no more smooth then android. its 100% the way u get it with zero personalization and gets boring fast. all the new androids cannot even be compared. I dont even care to upgrade to note 2 cuz OG note is so good.

This is written on my note sitting and drinking a beer in front of 711.

Wp has too few options. I want to like it and i have a samsung focus but after 2 months i got a new phone. That samsung focus lags so much compared to my note when the note is doing 10x as much stuff at the same time.

Rightnow lumia 920 is only ok wp phone and 90% of what is good about it is the camera.

Wp works.

But android works too and with many more apps features and compatability.

You have a malfunctioning Focus... not to mention it is a two year old phone. 100% certain on that. My Lumia absolutely won't lag. It won't stutter. It zooms in an out on webpages so smoothly. That's not a claim that my Atrix, Sensation XL, or Galaxy S (1 or 2) could make.

You're right on the personalization and that's why my Nexus 7 is looking good...although I want some fucking space! But WP is fast, simple and effective.

I'm all across the board on everything. I like new tech and I like to fuck with shit. When I was on Android I'd either go vanilla or flash whatever rom I thought was best (I'm really no into cm though). But I know that android phones don't get any love unless you do it yourself or the development community does it...thus those updates aren't reliable and they aren't the way google designed them to be. Lame.

And my biggest annoyance about apps... the compatibility and optimization sucks! Whatever the googleplay has for android divide it by 5 and that's what works for the nexus 7. With phones I often found games that shrunk down and only used a portion of my qHD screen on the Atrix or didn't run on the GS2. That was frustrating.

But I find that apple does the best job of maximizing the hardware on their phones which is why we have a quadcore phone with 2gb or ram running nearly identical to a dual core phone with half the ram.

Either way I use WP and I'm the most happy with it but I will do some techsoul-searching in march when I plan on getting a new phone (either nexus, iphone, or nokia branded wp) because getting shafted by Microsoft sucks (as does their support), iOS is so fucking boring, and there is too little optimization and compatibility on android.